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Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Unborn (*1/2)

THE UNBORN

In The Unborn, beautiful Odette Yustman receives the worst letter a girl could ever receive from her nana Sofia, containing the opening line "It has fallen to you to finish what began in Auschwitz." Took me about five minutes to recover from the laughter. See, Yustman is being haunted by a dybbuk, a supernatural creature from Jewish mysticism that wanted to possess her unborn twin brother but is now coming for her. The backstory, involving Yustman's nana's life in a concentration camp where her twin brother was possessed by the dybbuk after the Nazis experimented on twins... Oh, for Christ's sake. Anyway, the dybbuk likes to fuck with Yustman by leaving blue gloves on the street, possessing the creepy kid next door Yustman babysits, freaking her out in club rest rooms, and slinging bugs and vomit at her. This dybbuk is really cramping Yustman's life as an affluent college student with a black best friend (wonder what happens to her?) and douchebag boyfriend in lovingly-photographed, wintry Chicago. For some reason, The Unborn also stars Gary Oldman as a helpful rabbi knowledgeable in the occult. Best guess is Oldman decided not to leave Chicago after The Dark Knight wrapped and he took a job in the next picture shooting in town. Carla Gugino is criminally underused in flashbacks as Yustman's dead mom who also had a problem with the dybbuk. Then Idris Elba shows up as a bad ass priest who's gonna fuck that dybbuk up. The main pleasure of The Unborn is watching Yustman, a Megan Fox lookalike without all the ink who you might actually feel comfortable bringing home to meet your mother. So much does Yustman resemble Fox that if she shimmied into shotgun inside Bumblebee, it might actually be a little while before Shia LaBeouf notices isn't not the same chick.